50 Donated License-Plate Cameras Went Up in Altadena. The Sheriff's Department Says They're Off Now.

Flock Safety donated 50 Flock Falcon plate readers to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in February 2025, per records obtained by L.A. TACO. A town council survey found 73% of Altadena residents opposed them.

Fifty license plate cameras went up around Altadena after the Eaton Fire. The company that makes them donated them to the sheriff. Flock Safety gave 50 Flock Falcon automated license plate readers to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in February 2025. The donation included a software subscription and free installation, according to records L.A. TACO obtained through a public records request. What the outlet published does not say how long the plate data was kept. It does not say who could search it.

Altadena is unincorporated. A county supervisor's office manages the town, and the sheriff patrols it. The Altadena Town Council is volunteer-run and advisory. Two members serve each of the town's eight census tracts, in two-year terms. The people arguing about the cameras are in many cases still rebuilding the houses the cameras face.

Residents found the cameras by looking up. Claire Phillips has lived in Altadena about a decade, and her home was declared a total loss. She learned of one camera in June 2025 from a message in a fire-recovery WhatsApp group, L.A. TACO reported. Neighbors posted video of more readers on black metal poles. Some stood beside dirt lots where houses had burned. Others sat at major intersections drivers cannot avoid.

What the record does not say

Nic Arnzen, chair of the Altadena Town Council, told the outlet the donation answered the fire. He said the town was vulnerable to looters afterward. In April 2025, the Sheriff's Department said crime in the area had risen 250% after the fires. The department formed a Looter Suppression Team and sent drones and deputies through the neighborhoods, according to the same report.

Whether the cameras did anything about that is unanswered. The Sheriff's Department did not respond to L.A. TACO's questions about the readers' effect on solving crime in Altadena. Flock Safety did not respond to the outlet's request for comment. The published records do not include search counts, retention periods or hot-list sources. They include no audit showing whether Altadena plate data stayed inside California, as Senate Bill 34 requires of police agencies.

An Altadena Town Council survey found 73% of residents opposed the cameras, the outlet reported. Council member Anton Anderson said by email that the department did not tell the town's elected officials the readers were going up either. He said more than half of them sit in historically Black and Brown parts of Altadena. He asked who is accountable for reporting back to the public on how the cameras are used.

The cameras are off. The poles are not.

LASD Commander Ernest Bille said in May 2026 that the Flock contract in Altadena had ended and the cameras were decommissioned. He spoke at a forum held by the Sheriff's Department Civilian Oversight Commission, L.A. TACO reported. Bille said the department's only ALPR contract is with Motorola Vigilant. Vigilant cameras are also in Altadena.

Arnzen confirmed the Flock cameras are off. He said there are no plans to take them down while the town, county and department gather more feedback. Shawna Dawson Beer runs the survivor-led network Beautiful Altadena, which she says connects more than 21,000 people across platforms. She told the outlet she wants the county to define what decommissioned means. Residents report catching the cameras' infrared flash on their phones at night. "Take them down," she said.

The regional trend runs the same direction. South Pasadena canceled its Flock lease on 27 cameras in March 2026 over data safety concerns. The Los Angeles Police Department let its Flock contract lapse in July 2026, per L.A. TACO. Its watchdog had urged a pause on new ALPR deployments pending public input. The inspector general's office of the LAPD Board of Police Commissioners counted 161 instances over two months in which officers stopped drivers. In each, a plate reader had wrongly flagged the car as stolen.

Source: lataco.com, retrieved August 24, 2026.